Robert Francis Maxfield was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on October 15, 1918. Maxfield moved to California in 1920 and during the 1930s he lived in Carpinteria, on the Pacific coast. After serving in the Army during WWII, he returned to France where he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Returning to California, he started as assistant animator at the Disney Studios in the mid-1940s. A telephone directory of July 25th 1946 shows that he shared room 1C-14 in the animation building in Burbank with Les Bierbaum and Fred Peters. He then worked at Hanna-Barbera until about 1970. Hanna-Barbera studios sent him on an assignment to France where he opted to remain.

Maxfield exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939; Print Rooms (Hollywood), 1940; Montecito Country Club, 1940; De Young Museum, 1945 (solo); Santa Barbara Museum, 1946 (solo).

Robert Frances Maxfield died on December 24, 2010 in Nogent-Sur-Marne, Val-De-Marne, France